And Bramble is convinced the 24-year-old's performances will improve as he builds up his match fitness, and hopes the midfielder plays a big part in the remainder of the season.

“The game at the weekend was Catts’ [Cattermole] first game back for a while and obviously he was trying his best to get up to match speed," he told the club's official website.

“It’s frustrating when you’ve been out for a while but he’ll get better with time – we all know what a good player he is.”

With Sunderland out of the FA Cup, Bramble has to wait two weeks before returning to Premier League action - something he is frustrated about because of the positives he believes the team can draw from the Arsenal loss.

“It was one of those games where the ball just wouldn’t go in for us,” he added.

“We’d like another game as soon as possible, we can take a lot of positives from Saturday’s game and we want to take that into the next game.

“People will look back at Reading and Arsenal in a few weeks and just look at the results but we feel we deserved something from both games.”